AI Startup Poly Relaunches as a Cloud-Based File System With 100GB Free Storage

TL;DR

• Poly announced a revamped platform on Tuesday that lets people store, structure, and search large quantities of files using AI — and it’s offering 100GB of free storage to get them started.

YC-backed Poly relaunches as a cloud-hosted file storage with AI search

Poly, a startup once focused on generating 3D assets with AI, has reemerged with a new mission: helping users organize their digital lives. The company announced a revamped platform on Tuesday that lets people store, structure, and search large quantities of files using AI — and it’s offering 100GB of free storage to get them started.

The relaunch marks Poly’s second major product shift since its founding in 2022 by Abhay Agarwal and Sam Young, who participated in Y Combinator’s accelerator. After the AI-powered asset-generation space exploded with well-funded competitors, Poly shuttered its original product in 2023 and quietly pivoted. The team spent the past year building a cloud-based file system designed to make it easier to locate and work across documents, images, videos, and other content types.

“We asked users what parts of their workflow AI could meaningfully improve,” said Agarwal, a Microsoft research fellow who previously worked on vision AI tools for the visually impaired. “One big unmet need was simply finding things. People have too many files scattered everywhere.”

A New AI-Powered File Hub

Poly now functions as a cloud storage and file organization tool, powered by natural language search. It supports PDFs, text documents, images, audio, video, web pages, and more. Users can tag files, generate summaries or translations, and ask contextual questions using the built-in AI assistant. The platform can also auto-organize content, creating folders or renaming files when needed.

Currently available on the web and macOS — with a Windows version on the way — the app will begin onboarding users from its waitlist starting today.

The startup has raised $8 million in seed funding, led by Felicis with participation from Bloomberg Beta, NextView, Figma Ventures, AI Grant, Wing Ventures, and MVP Ventures. That includes its earlier $3.9 million raised in 2022.

“File systems are incredibly powerful, but most people have forgotten how to use them well,” said James Cham, partner at Bloomberg Beta. “Poly brings them back to the center, with AI helping you think more clearly.”

Positioning Against Google Drive and Dropbox

Poly’s offering puts it in direct competition with major cloud storage platforms like Google Drive and Dropbox, which also feature AI-assisted search. Early users, however, say Poly’s search performance is stronger — and that the ability to drop in a YouTube link and get an instant summary is a standout feature.

Agarwal said Poly aims to be a workspace for AI-native creators and knowledge workers who sift through dense material daily. The platform’s shared drives let teams upload files, collaborate, ask questions, and extract insights together. Upcoming features include:

• Web search

• A markdown and text editor

• Custom metadata support

• Report generation

• Spreadsheet analysis via AI agents

• Google Docs link ingestion

• Direct file and folder sharing

Poly also offers a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server, allowing users to bring its file system into tools like ChatGPT or Cursor.

Generous Storage, With Room to Grow

Poly’s 100GB free tier dwarfs the typical free offerings from other major storage platforms. Users can upgrade to 2TB for $10 per month. There’s no photo-syncing feature yet, but Agarwal said it’s a potential future direction — and one that could position Poly as a Google Photos alternative.

He added that early testers often treat Poly as active project storage rather than general archival space.

“Our focus is on people who constantly work with information — researchers, analysts, customer service teams — anyone who needs insights from their files quickly,” he said.

As Poly prepares to scale publicly, it hopes that combining powerful search, flexible file handling, and AI-driven insights will help users finally make sense of their digital archives.